UW prof finds way to split virtual electron

Roger G Melko

WATERLOO — So a bunch of scientists are standing at a gigantic, futuristic-looking particle accelerator.

You stroll up and ask the lab coats to mash two electrons together to break them.

“They would laugh at you,” said Roger Gordon Melko, a University of Waterloo assistant professor of physics, after teaching a class on Friday.

“Because, in our universe, it’s known to be fundamentally impossible. The electron just can’t be split. Everyone knows that. There’s no point in trying.”

But Melko and two international associates — Matthew Hastings of Duke University and Sergei Isakov of a theoretical physics institute in Zurich, Switzerland — have found a way that works, at least in theory.

They just had to look outside our universe to find it.

They created a virtual material — let’s call it a quantum liquid on crystal lattice — and cooled it down to Absolute Zero within a computer simulation.

That’s how they got an electron to naturally split into perfect halves in the artificial world programmed into a supercomputer in the basement of Waterloo’s Physics building. Each electron half owned exactly half the charge of the full electron.

“I don’t have to hit it with a big hammer to try and break it,” Melko said.

It’s doubtful anyone in the scientific community is guffawing.

Their findings, now appearing in the top-notch research journal Science, have potential grand implications for the real world in the future.

This could even be the Rosetta Stone moment in the pursuit of a “God particle” from which to construct practical quantum computers, which would harness the power of atoms and molecules to perform tasks a gazillion times faster than silicon-based models.

Who knows where this discovery of an electron-splitting treasure map could lead? It’s up to scientists in practical fields to follow and construct a real-world X to dig up.

“We think people in other scientific fields will think it’s cool,” said Melko, who planned to celebrate the success of his trio with a few pints of Wellington Stout on Friday night.

Melko, 34, is a self-described practical man in a dreamer’s field.

After all, the Waterloo grad is the Northern Manitoba son of a bush pilot in The Pas.

But, a year ago, he met with Hastings in Santa Barbara, Calif. to discuss what kind of simulation might lead to splitting a virtual electron. Last August, the eureka moment arrived when they reviewed the data. Now, the findings are published.

The next step? Turning this “fundamentally weird” quantum liquid they’ve created in a computer matrix into something graspable in the real world.

That job could take years, maybe decades, if it is even possible to accomplish.

“But you never know with physics,” Melko said. “We hope we get lucky.”